Commodity Storage and the Market Effects of Biofuel Policies

Published July 1, 2015 by Aaron Smith. View the abstract.Return to the Papers listing | Download the paper. US legislation passed in 2007 (RFS2) increased by about 1.3 billion bushels the net amount of corn required to be processed annually into ethanol for motor-fuel use. Using modern time-series methods, we estimate that corn prices were […]

Rethinking Trade-Exposure: The Incidence of Environmental Charges in the Nitrogenous Fertilizer Industry

Published June 1, 2015 by Jacob Humer and James Bushnell. View the abstract.Return to the Papers listing. | Download the paper. The imposition of environmental regulations, such as greenhouse gas charges, to domestic manufacturing traditionally creates concerns over the impacts of those regulations on international competition and downstream product prices. The US Nitrogen fertilizer industry, […]

Utilization and Customer Behavior: Smart Choices for the Smart Grid

Published May 3, 2015 by Jeremy B. Smith. View the abstract.Return to the Papers listing. | Download the paper. The smart grid offers a wide array of opportunities to improve efficiency of the electricity grid via load management policies. This chapter reviews the current state of knowledge in the economics literature as it relates to time-varying […]

Overlapping Environmental Policies and the Impact on Pollution

Published April 29, 2015 by Kevin Novan. View the abstract.Return to the Papers listing. | Download the paper. In an effort to reduce pollution from the electricity sector, governments are heavily subsidizing renewables. The subsidies, however, are not being used in isolation. Instead, they are often provided in regions where certain pollutants are regulated by […]

Policy Shocks and Market-Based Regulations: Evidence from the Renewable Fuel Standard

Published May 7, 2015 by Aaron Smith. View the abstract.Return to the Papers listing. | Download the paper. The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) is a US federal policy that mandates large increases in biofuel consumption and is implemented using a market for tradeable compliance credits. We develop a dynamic model of compliance with the RFS2 […]